THE VIRGINIAN-PILOT
Copyright (c) 1994, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: Friday, October 21, 1994 TAG: 9410200177
SECTION: VIRGINIA BEACH BEACON PAGE: 06 EDITION: FINAL
TYPE: Editorial
LENGTH: Short : 44 lines
``Something big's going to happen in this community,'' Tom Meeker said last week when the Virginia Racing Commission snubbed Virginia Beach and his own Churchill Downs. ``I don't know what it is, but something big is going to happen.''
Like what? When? How? Good or bad?
Mr. Meeker may well be looking ahead to riverboat gambling, which Churchill Downs has had a hand in elsewhere and which the General Assembly may be more inclined to approve this year than last. But this city has a list of revenue-producing projects closer to home and financing and reality than floating casinos are. Among them is the amphitheater. Or should we say was the amphitheater? The snag it's hit on site selection, staff writer Bill Reed reported Sunday, could mean Council support unravels.
Whatever happened to that welcome display of councilmanic togetherness in support of the racetrack? Even Councilman Robert Dean, private-sector protector, was willing to put up millions in city money for that public-private venture. The amphitheater is another, with direct and indirect returns to the city that mean at worst it breaks even. The city has dickered with the federal Resolution Trust Corp. over a tract beside the courthouse the RTC is in the business of selling and the city can buy, reportedly, for about what it now sinks into special Oceanfront events. Which events, in that larger scheme of things the city should but doesn't develop, an amphitheater could neatly complement. Then there's the land selected for the racetrack, an idyllic setting comfortably far from residential neighborhoods but maybe too close to Oceana for the Navy's blessing.
Somewhere, and soon, an amphitheater is not only doable; it's needed after a string of lost projects that this wannabe city actually can do. Here's another such signal: Find an economic development director with the vision to see and package possibilities, and the savvy to sell them, to businesses, the public and the pols. by CNB